Raise Your Voice Against War in Syria and Iraq/NIH Funded Torture/US Navy Sonar Testing/Censorship of Journalists

Still vital for the rest of us with conscience to speak out against a new war in Syria, and a return to war in Iraq–at the cost of billions of dollars, and unimaginable cost to human life and peace everywhere. Also vital to keep speaking out against surveillance and censorship of journalists, activists, writers, and everyday working citizens. And PETA tells us new horrors are being unveiled in recent NIH-funded use of baby macaques ($30 million spent in the last 7 years to traumatize newborns) building on 30 years of needless psychological and physical torture. NRDC tells us the Navy is knowingly going ahead with 5-year mid-frequency sonar testing expected to strand, maim, and kill thousands of whales and other sea creatures.

Just Foreign Policy is running a campaign to get Congress to debate bombing Syria. The Committee to Protect Journalists is running a campaign to speak out for journalists. PETA is running a campaign to stop the torture of baby monkeys. NRDC is running a petition to the Secretary of Defense to stop the sonar testing. There is another petition as well on The Petition Site to stop the sonar.

“The staggering costs of all this—$25 billion to train the Iraqi Army,$60 billion for the reconstruction-that-wasn’t,$2 trillion for the overall war, almost4,500 Americans dead and more than 32,000 wounded, and an Iraqi death toll of more than190,000 (though some estimates go as high as amillion)—can now be measured against the results. The nine-year attempt to create an American client state in Iraq failed, tragically and completely. The proof of that is on today’s front pages.” Read Peter van Buren’s op-ed at Nation of Change on the madness of returning to war in Iraq and bombing Syria.

“Søren Kierkegaard in “The Present Age” warned that the modern state seeks to eradicate conscience and absorb individuals into a public that can be shaped and manipulated by those in power.” Read Chris Hedges’ op-ed on continuous war, the madness of a new war, and what the US is trending toward, via Simone Weil’s ruminations on war, 1984, and the distant memory of the Roman Empire.